No Regrets

Seattle justified in striking back—before they, too, became targets of a brutal sexual criminal.

It was the first day of June. After a long, long winter, it should have been sunny, but the day dawned bleak and cloudy that year with the threat of a storm. The weather was the least concern of the terribly injured girl who crawled slowly from her concrete prison in the basement of a condemned building on Melrose Avenue in Seattle. Something was awfully wrong with her—something she couldn’t quite focus on—and billows of what seemed like dark smoke kept blotting out her vision as she inched her way up worn steps. The sidewalk wasn’t far, but it seemed a football field away to her. She didn’t realize that she was completely naked; what reasoning power remained in her pain-befogged brain told her that she had to get someone to help her.
    When she struggled to get to her feet, she fell—she didn’t know how many times. Finally she gave up and scrambled crablike on her hands and knees, moving forward only by inches through the overgrown shrubbery that blocked the dirt path from the busy street beyond. She was headed for The Melrose, a once-grand apartment built in the 1920s. Surely, once she got to the street, someone would see her and call an ambulance.
    Through sheer force of will, the girl made it to the sidewalk.Through her blurry eyes, she could make out the form of a well-dressed, middle-aged woman approaching.
    “Please...” she begged. “I’ve been hurt. Please help me—”
    The woman glanced at her with a combination of distaste and suspicion, and edged away. And then, incredibly, the woman quickened her pace and walked off without looking back.
    The teenager crawled over to the grass-level basement window of the apartment building and rapped frantically on the window. But no one came. She began to black out once more and waves of nausea washed over her before she passed out again. When she came to, she was lying on the hard sidewalk. Then she saw a male passerby.
    “Help me,” she pleaded. “Please help me.”
    The man, too, ignored her.
    She began to wonder if she was invisible and realized that she was probably going to die. Nobody could hurt this bad and live; perhaps she was already dead—that would explain why no one was listening to her. But then she saw another man move cautiously toward her. He stood there, watching her. Maybe she wasn’t dead. Maybe he could see her, after all.
    “Please,” she whispered again. “I need an ambulance.”
    She struggled to her feet, only to collapse again.
    “You don’t have to come close,” she gasped. “You don’t even have to listen to me. I’ve been beaten up and raped. Just call me an ambulance.”
    The man walked close enough to note the address of the apartment house, and muttered, “Okay.” But then he walked away. She prayed that he was going to a phone booth to call for someone to help her. After what seemed like a long time, she heard the wails of an ambulance approaching,and she allowed herself to sink back into the blackness again, barely aware of the paramedics from the Seattle Fire Department who were working over her.
    If you could say that she was at all lucky, she was fortunate to have those highly trained paramedics trying to save her. Dr. Michael Copass’s innovative paramedic program was the gold standard in the nation. This team—Aid Unit 25—was stationed nearby at the Harborview Medical Center, where personnel were fully capable of dealing with everything from heart attacks to gunshot wounds.
    Medic One paramedics were used to seeing the results of violent accidents and assaults, but this young woman’s broken body was as horrific as anything they’d ever encountered. It looked as if someone had used her for a punching- and kicking-bag. Her slender form was a mass of purplish bruises, her left breast completely discolored. She might have been pretty once, but they certainly couldn’t tell that now. Her eyes were almost swollen shut, blackened by the force of blows. Her broken jaw wobbled and her cheeks were caved in. Blood leaked from her nose and mouth, and each breath was agonizing.
    Although they doubted that she would survive, the paramedics started an intravenous drip with D5W (a dextrose-saline solution to keep her veins open) to stabilize her. They managed to get an airway tube down her throat so they could administer oxygen. Now, they gently lifted her to a gurney and raced to the ER Trauma Unit of